Category: Nursing homes 💚

You hold shaking hands and provide the ultimate care:
Your presence, the knowing, that you are simply there.
You rise to face the giant of disease and despair,
It is your finest hour, though you may be unaware.

From “A Prayer for the Caregiver” by Bruce McIntyre

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By the path, a circle of wild lupins hold
their upright spears, waiting for news.
I can imagine how they toll their blue bells,
hailing, luminous, and I bend to them,
listening at their hundred open mouths
so that for a while I fall under their spell

From “Sirens” by Seán Hewitt

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The fishing has finished. It is the beginning
of hunting season. It is the time to pick apples
and the time to make cider.
A lost flock of Sebastopol geese
shuffle from a pond on Stephen’s Green.
They do not know that it is Michaelmas.

From “Michaelmas Daisies” by Majella Kelly

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Albatrosses rise
to 10,000 feet, cock their wings, and glide
until the sound of spray wakes them.
When I am there, silence can open
like a sea rose, billowing.

From “Blue Dark” by David McLoghlin

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Now I must these three praise –
Po’boys, gumbo, crawfish etouffeé.
It’s a long ocean voyage away, indeed,
From mackerel, champ and day old disheen.

From “April, 1920” by August Kleinzahler

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she touched him, doing again
in that place, at that hour,
the quiet work of love.

From “Now That He’s Gone” by Michael Lauchlan

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Smell and colour in a house
ruled by hyacinth are such
that we forget to look out

From “Narcissus” by Seán Lysaght

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The bartender is so attentive to the tilt
of the whiskey bottle pouring out its earth.
The librarian’s shorthand records
a copper cup next to the five tap beer spout,
the bill footed by the waiter in an apron and bowtie
after the table skips out.

From “The Congress” by John Gosslee

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All day trimming branches and leaves, the homeowner
sweeping the summer into a green heap;
all evening minding the flames,
inhaling the incense of smouldering laurel and pine.

From “October” by Simon Armitage

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All they want is to be told –
like my father told his cats
with his rough hand,
the light touch of his crooked fingers on their fur –
that they are not alone,
that they are important

From “The Irish Airman Parachutes to Earth” by Martina Evans

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The birds on the water resemble sleepwalkers now
and our words clatter like stones
on a shore slipping from sunlight into shadow.

From “Yeats’s Swans” by Campbell McGrath

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